Two-Minute Warning

My friends, whenever I hear some red-white-and-blue-blooded Heartlander say "Obama scares me," my own blood curdles. My rainbow-commie-lesbo- liberal-unpatriotic blood. I know what they're saying, my friends. You know what they're saying. Joe the Dickhead knows what they're saying. No one wants to say it aloud, my friends. But, my friends, we all know what they're saying.

Thank the gods Mr. Obama is running for President.

Aside from transformational presence and stunning intellect, Mr. Obama's candidacy has given us another gift. Now we have a chance to clean house once and for all. Now all the racists and bigots (and misogynists and anti-intellectuals) will be forced out of their moth-balled closets at long last, into the bright light of day, and we will know who they are -- who we are -- so we can finally put this sad chapter behind us and focus on trying to save this sad country, not to mention this sad world, before it's too late.

It's already the eleventh hour, my friends. My friends, it's actually 11:58.

Welcome to the Season of Fear. How telling that our election cycle occurs just after Halloween, when all the leftover ghosts and goblins and ghouls (Oh my!) can join the party, elbow to elbow with the politicos, their corporeal counterparts.

Last Saturday evening I took the dog for a walk, through the fallen red-orange-and-yellow leaves of my lily-white neighborhood, and as a few more McPain lawn signs mysteriously toppled over at my passing, I made my own mental list. That is to say the list wasn't mental, it was made mentally. Whatever, it goes something like this:

Things that scare me:

- liver disease
- Michele Bachmann
- humanity
- death

Main headings, to be sure, each can be expanded exponentially.

Back to my point. Did you catch MB on Hardball? Move over, Sarah! Your fourth-cousin-twice-removed-and-then-returned-again from Minnesota is strutting her hour upon the stage. In six-inch heels, no less. She's matching you inch-for-inch, baby! And to think a couple of shirttails like youse two were virtual unknowns a few short weeks ago. Your rising to such a level so rapidly is a particularly American story. It matters. I suggest a nude "everything-but-the-stilettos" Jello wrestling competition for the two of youse for election night, only patriots allowed, proceeds going to the National Taxidermist Association.

Speaking of which, is it just me, or does John McCain appear to have been embalmed? Maybe it's the latest in cosmetic enhancement procedures. A case of it ain't over 'til it's over, even if it's over.

The fact is, when we meet again, my friends, if we ever do, it will be over. 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue will have a New Occupant, the Current Occupant will go back to drinking heavily (and he really should, my friends, if he hasn't already), and, if the gods have smiled upon us, all those fear-mongered Heartlanders referred to above will just have to eat it.

Eat it, baby, eat it!

Myself, I'm looking forward to a new menu. Like many of you, my friends, I've spent the last eight years wrestling bulimia, I look forward to something different on my plate. Something palatable for a change. And change, my friends, is what it's all about. It's in the air, my friends. Along with rapidly rising levels of unknown particulate matter. (Note to self: Add that to list.)

October

I sit in the sun at the table, looking into the yard, at color so astonishing I want to weep. This bittersweet beauty of fall, the season of death. Such vivacity! Mother Nature has a sense of irony, if not humor.

Blood red, blood orange, everywhere I look, blood. Even the cardinals are back, having spent their summer in the nearby woods. They camouflage themselves within the burning bush, patient for a chance at the feeder.

The whitethroats have come and gone, whistling that half-assed autumnal version of their singular call. Now the juncos are moving through. They swirl around the yard en masse like miniature tornadoes, vying for seed with the usual suspects -- chics and nuts, squirrels and chips, pigeons and stars.

The dog thinks she's Joe Hunter. She lies in wait beneath the lilac, striped in shadow like a tiger, her head a periscope riveted toward a chipmunk across the grass. She could remain like that for an hour, half the morning, the whole of her being quivering in some species memory, some ancient life-and-death struggle that lives still in her muscles like a ghost.

Ghosts are everywhere. Ducks and geese, grouse and pheasants, bear, moose, deer. The haunted season.

The first dog died in the fall, and the second. My grandmother. My mother. Better to bow out in such vibrancy, however brief, I suppose, than hold on into the long dark cold. And then comes spring, so giddy, so sophomoric, who wouldn't be susceptible to such a reprieve? Followed by the easy drunkenness of summer, crowded and predictable. Better October, the year at its zenith, one more for the great migration.

Now a crow has appeared, motionless on the rim of the birdbath, a black hole against the scarlet ivy crawling across the fence behind it. Black Hole locks eyes with Joe Hunter, it's a staredown. My money's on Joe, but nothing feels certain. Not any more.

Except death. And taxes. Who was it said that?

And it's certain I can't stay here, in this moment, however much I might yearn to. Weeping, yearning. Such old-fashioned words. For an old-fashioned season. The best I can do is to save it, this window-moment, a snapshot to be held up against the years as they go by. More years behind now, than ahead. The snapshots strung together like a necklace. Or a chain.

This is the link I would choose. This place of simultaneous being and ending. Like holding two fundamentally opposing viewpoints at the same time. Someone said that, about artists. Who? The point being, despite the improbability of it, one is somehow still able to function.

Roadtrip

I spent the evening with an old friend last week, "friend" being the operative word, and after a few bottles of wine and a shot of Tina Fey, we got out the ol' laptop and started dishing on those poor misguided souls who'd attended our 90th high school reunion. Not that we cared.

We were appalled. Who were all these old fat white people and what were they doing at this party? After a few more bottles, we congratulated ourselves on our decision not to attend the wake after all. Of course, had we graced the mourners with our presence, it was obvious we would've won hands down. What "winning" entailed was anybody's guess. We were content to gloat from afar, while, having run out of cheaper options, we contemplated breaking open the ol' Brunello di Montalcino 1999.

Or not.

I'll say it again, in case you weren't listening, and who in their right mind would be. Ours was the pivotal generation for women. The point where two roads diverged. The first road being the traditional lives our mothers and their mothers and their mothers' mothers had lived since the beginning of time. The second being the new road, the road untraveled, the road of freedom from all that had gone before.

What a long strange trip it's been.

And here's the thing. Right there, in our own high school graduating class, the two roads collided head-on. KA-BAM!! Like an all-girl softball game had been called and teams were drawn up even as we popped our zits and ratted our hair and argued over which Beatle was the favorite.

"All you aspiring wives-and-mothers, line your lily-white asses up over here! And all you aspiring to be anything but wives-and-mothers, get your lesbo-communist asses over there!"

Not that I had anything against wives-and-mothers. Okay, I did. But aside from despising the wife-and-mother thing with the intensity of a thousand suns, I wanted to, not necessarily in order of importance:

1. have orgasms
2. play guitar
3. get high
4. dance

Also:

5. live alone in my own apartment
6. drive alone in my own car
7. smoke
8. swear
9. fit into boys' jeans
10. have lovers and orgasms, both multiple (did I already mention this?)

Oh, and:

11. get a college degree so I could do all of the above

While others of my peer group were busy wiving and mothering, I worked on my list. By the time I hit thirty, I'd pretty much accomplished everything I'd set out to do. And then some. And then some wiseass little voice in my ear started in:

"You're thirty, you lesbo communist, what've you got to show for yourself?"

I thought for a minute.

"I'm thin," I said.

"So's your wallet," said the wiseass little voice. "Anything else?"

"I've got calluses."

"Where, on your ass?"

"On my fingers. From playing guitar."

"From playing with yourself, you mean."

"Fuck you."

"No, fuck you. That's the operative word here, LC. You're fucked. No money, no career, no credit, no prospects, nobody and nothing to show for yourself. And you're almost forty. Make that fifty. You are fucked, my friend, eff-you-see-kayed! And another thing..."

I was about to tell that wiseass little voice that I'd do it all again, pretty much exactly the same way, that this wasn't one of those "If I knew then what I know now" type of deals, je ne regrette pas. Instead I did some drugs and watched a rerun, doesn't matter which one, only that it had happened previously.

And I would. Do it all again. Pretty much exactly the same way. We choose what we choose, for any number of reasons. But that's the key, isn't it? As women we are finally free to choose. Which road, which bend in the road, which side road, which wayside rest.

So there we are, a couple of old friends, staring at all those former classmates, and we don't recognize anyone. No one. Not a single person. Plus, they all look alike. There's a sameness to them that's downright eerie. The Stepford Reunion. Now we're on a mission. We click on nametags to enlarge them, then get out the ol' high school yearbook for identification purposes. It's like a shakedown, "Where were you in the spring of '68?"

Not that we cared.

Of course nobody looks the way they used to. Except for that girl who'd obviously had work done. Bitch. By now we're two sheets and waxing philosophical, so I throw in my two cents and tell my old friend about the list, the one that started with orgasms and ended with...orgasms. But let's not go there.

Because in the end it's all about choices. We could've chosen to be wives-and-mothers. We could've chosen to go to the reunion. In either case, we didn't. We could've easily made the trip, it wasn't that far. Not in dog years. In people years it was a lifetime. Many, many, many lifetimes. Too much work to make up the distance. And no desire to.

Let's Call the Whole Thing Off

John McCain is driving me to drink. Not that it takes much. Much of a muchness. Who said that? The Doormouse, I think, to Alice. Compared to the McPain rhetoric, the Mad Tea Party comes off more like a Mary Kay party.

I used to know a girl who sold Mary Kay. This was back in the Old Days down in The City, before I shacked up with my husband, when I lived in an old subdivided mansion with a dozen or so young subdivided tenants, all of us females, more or less, of various persuasions. Musician, artist, stewardess, teacher, psychologist, actress. Then there was the girl I mentioned. I'll call her Shirley.

Shirley's was the garden apartment, a.k.a. the basement, a.k.a. the root cellar. Her pad was dark and low-ceilinged and sprawled out into the far recesses over half the footprint of the house. It had only two windows -- a feature which probably kept her out of jail -- and beyond them one saw tree trunks, grass blades and kneecaps. In other words, Shirley lived in a badger's sett. That's sett with two Ts.

Tea for two, and two for tea...

Shirley was of the entrepreneurial persuasion. She sold Mary Kay, stained glass, vintage clothing, the odd end table, and various controlled substances. I got to know Shirley because of that last item. Things being what they were, I found myself hanging out at her place pretty much every spare nanosecond, where I often ran into one or seven of the other girls from "Upstairs."

Upstairs girl, you've been living in an upstairs world...

During one memorable storm in the winter of '83, when those of us who were painfully employed were unable to get to our places of painful employment, and the buses had stopped running and the mail couldn't get through and the streets were drifted six feet high and counting, a half dozen Upstairs Girls found ourselves riding it out down at Shirley's, and a legend was born. The All-Day-All-Night-and-Half-the-Next-Day-Mary-Kay-Snow-Emergency. Not a tale one tells at family gatherings around a campfire.

All day, all night, Mary Kay...

During that legendary marathon, gin was played (and drunk) endlessly. Dresses circa the Great Depression were donned. Makeup was applied, removed, reapplied, re-removed. At one point roller skates figured prominently. Vital sustenance was eschewed in favor of Chiclets and Winstons. All to an endless soundtrack of local-boy-makes-good Prince, who entreated us to party like it was 1999 -- Yo! No problemo! -- while a record-breaking thirty-six-hour blizzard endlessly raged, inside and out.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow...

That was back in 1983. In 1983 John McCain was the age Mr. Obama is now. More or less. Less is more. Tis more blessed to give than to receive. Give or take. Take it or leave it. Leave it to Beaver. Bucky Beaver.

You say Ipana, and I say Obama...

While we're on the subject, tell the truth. Does John McCain remind you of someone? Someone from the past perhaps? Someone from the Old Days? Is it just me, or does he bear a striking resemblance to Elmer Fudd? That's Fudd with two Ds. I mean, he looks like Mr. Fudd, he sounds like Mr. Fudd. If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck... Although I'd give Elmer a good decade, maybe two, on the Republican nominee. That's nominal with two Es.

Last I heard, Shirley moved to California (don't they all?) and had a baby. One of the former Upstairs Girls ran into her in the Old Bar down in the Old Neighborhood down in The City, about a decade after the All-Day-All-Night-and-Half-the-Next-Day-Mary-Kay-Snow-Emergency. The baby was strapped to a barstool to keep it from falling off and the former Upstairs Girl said it was a pretty weird-looking baby.

My husband thinks all babies are weird-looking, but nobody asked him. What's he doing butting into this story anyway?

Anyway, the former Upstairs Girl said the baby looked like Elmer Fudd. No she didn't. But if you ask me, all babies look like Elmer Fudd. But nobody asked me. Speaking of John McCain, has anybody seen my drink?





http://ingeb.org/songs/mary_ann.html

And Don't Call Me Shirley

While cleaning out my Post-Its the other day, I found this, from a newspaper headline:

"Man Found Partially Frozen to Pavement"

I mean, who needs more? Enough said. Like Sarah Palin staring all bushy-eyed at the camera and explaining -- with gestures! -- that because Alaska is surrounded by two foreign countries, this gives her foreign relations experience.

First of all, is Canada really a country?

Against my better judgment, I've been YouTubing Mrs. Palin in my spare time. Questions regarding the meaning of "better" and "spare" aside, as a result of these latenight cyber forays, I am in official fullblown flabbergastion over this broad.

Raise your hand if you've seen the clip of Mrs. Palin entreating the masses to ask Jesus for help in convincing Congress to drill for oil in Alaska. If not, pour yourself a stiff one and settle in for a fun-filled exciting cartoon show.

Now we have the spectacle of Mrs. Palin turning herself into a folk hero right before our very eyes as she Aw-Shucks! her way through a "debate" with Joe O'Biden, as she called him, who is also showing telltale signs of fullblown flabbergastion, poor man.

I have a sneaking suspicion all those fat white women in the heartland who've been weeping rapturously over McCain's selection of a running mate don't have computers. Have never set a fat foot on the Cyberland Express. Otherwise they, too, would surely be in the beginning stages of flabbergastion. Right? I saw an AP photo of a group of these women, hands clasped in prayer over ample breasts, tears streaming down ample cheeks, gazing up at Mrs. Palin as if upon the face of Jesus' little sister, Pistol. Pistol Christ.

So shoot me if I'm an asshole. Everybody's an asshole.

But these are not women I'd want to know. Not women I'd want to be choosing the next President of the United States. Does the number "nineteenth" mean anything to them? How about "twenty-first"? How about "sixty-four-thousand"? Am I being obtuse here? Do they even know what obtuse means?

And B, is the United States really a democracy?

Barely 60% of us vote. And that's on a good day. We're too busy YouTubing and HBOing and killing the fatted calf, hold the pickles, to bother helping decide something as inconsequential as who will be the next Leader of the Free World. I mean, whatever. And those who do vote have been holding the rest of us hostage at some humongous church revival meeting, stuffed to the stained-glass with the aforementioned fat white women, and served up with busloads of red meat and red necks and red-white-and-blue-blooded babies screaming for more beast milk. Er, breast.

Let me ask you this, Faithful Reader. Yeah, you, I'm talking to you. Did you get a good look at those people who attended the Republican National Convention? Be honest now. Did they seem real to you? Or more like Gary Larson characters? Do you think they actually exist? Or did Karl Rove create an entire virtual reality to exact one more monster mindfuck on the unsuspecting viewing audience? Did those people look like anybody you know? Anybody you'd like to know? Anybody you might find partially frozen to the pavement?

I'm exhausted. All this outrage is outrageous.

Plus, I've cleaned out a year's worth of Post-Its, now my Idea Bank is...bankrupt! OMIGAWD!! I need a bailout!! I didn't mean to do it!! I can hear the trash haulers hauling ass down the alley even as I write this!! IT'S GONE, BABY, GONE!!

But wait a minute...hold the mustard...I'm remembering something...it's coming back to me...some headline...something about a church...

"Woman Dies of Heart Attack While Playing Organ at Funeral"

Not bad. Only now I've used it, it's out there. Like that guy frozen to the pavement, you don't need the details. Oh, well. Back to the drawing board. Actually, the newspaper. Make that YouTube.